The author of the tutorial is David Kelly.
This tutorial describes how to use AKVIS Sketch plug-in in conjunction with AliveColors to create a realistic looking black and white pencil sketch from an existing colour photograph.
If your favourite image editing program is "plug-in" compatible, to add interest to this tutorial why not download Image 01, the original colour photograph, plus AKVIS Sketch's unrestricted free ten-day trial and try out the photo with Sketch, inputting your own settings then comparing the tutorial's final pencil sketch result with your own.
Download the photo by right clicking it then selecting Save Picture As. Save it to your hard drive, remembering where you saved it. To go to the downloads page for AKVIS Sketch’s unrestricted free ten-day trial, please left click here.
Click OK to apply the blur effect to the image.
Note: Unlike the human eye AKVIS Sketch does not divide photo details into important and less important areas. All clear details are drawn sharply. Depending on the original photograph there could be times when not enough separation occurs between the principal subject and less important background or foreground objects. To avoid this apply a Gaussian "blur" effect to these areas before running Sketch. This helps with subject separation in the final sketch.
If the pencil sketch isn't to your liking play about with Sketch's Effects and Strokes slider controls until you are happy with the result. Remembering of course to left click Sketch's "Run" button after each adjustment to apply that changed parameter value to the image.
Although this example was created with AKVIS Sketch plug-in used in conjunction with AliveColors, similar results can be obtained with other plug-in compatible image-editing software packages.
AKVIS Sketch is a creative, addictive plug-in that will enable you to create your own personal, quality artwork from colour or black and white photographs with the minimum of effort.